When 2K and Firaxis announced the Civilization 5: Gods & Kings expansion, turn-based strategy fans in the GameSpy offices gave a standing ovation to the return of religion and espionage, and a promise of a much-needed combat revamp. Now that I’ve had a chance to go hands-on with a preview build, it’s time to look back through my notes and compare and contrast what I played with what was promised. So, how’d it do? Let’s take a look.

Religion (Faith)

What They Said“Quite possibly the most-requested major addition to Civilization V, the Gods & Kings expansion offers a new ‘Faith’ resource that enables you to found your own religion and grow it from a simple Pantheon of the Gods to a world-spanning, fully customized religion.”

So many choices! What silly name shall I give my religion?

How it Plays
What doesn’t Faith do in Gods & Kings? It’s such a useful new device that it’s difficult to shoehorn into one simple explanation. It’s entirely dependent upon how you use it. Faith is the resource that makes the heart of Religion beat, and if you’re not generating enough of it through building shrines, discovering wonders, or a variety of other means, you’ll be playing Gods & Kings all wrong.

After you generate a certain amount of Faith, you’ll be given the opportunity to found a Pantheon to build your Religion around (which won’t happen until you generate 200 Faith, automatically unlocking a Great Prophet). There are over 20 different Pantheons to choose from, with effects like increasing production from fishing boats, a bonus to science in cities with trade routes, or simply increasing how fast your borders can grow — it’s important to choose the belief that best matches your play style and compliments your starting civilization in order to utilize this mechanic effectively.

Some of the Wonders help give you a boost in Faith.

But Faith isn’t confined to giving you bonus attributes. Depending on what you pick for additional beliefs, it can also be used to purchase missionaries who can go out and spread your religion to other city-states and civilizations, allowing you to generate even more Faith. How Firaxis is going to balance all of these different traits is mind boggling, but I’m digging how deep and involved it is in the preview build.

Espionage (Spies)

What They Said“In addition to being able to establish embassies with your rival civilizations, spies will now be an important part of how you conduct your foreign affairs. Surveilling foreign cities, stealing advanced techs, and garnering influence with city-states are some of the things you’ll be able to do with this new powerful mechanic.”

Let’s see, who should I spy on first…

How it Plays
Espionage reinvents diplomacy in Civ 5. Not only can you steal technology from more advanced civilizations (thus allowing you to catch up in areas you may have been neglecting), you can also learn valuable intelligence about “allies” that may be secretly plotting against you or other civilizations. Then it’s up to you to decide what to do with this information. Hang onto it and position your forces appropriately? Perhaps you should warn some of your neutral buddies in the hopes of establishing better relations with those nations? That’s up to you. They can also rig local elections inside city-states which can benefit you in a number of ways, such as helping supply a resource you’re lacking or having them gift you units to help bolster your military.

But racing to get spies will be a double-edged sword — once a single civilization manages to reach the Renaissance period, every player will get a spy, and the game of international intrigue will begin all over the world. Other civilizations will share intelligence with you as well depending on your relationship, a very “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” kind of dynamic. Counter-intelligence will also play a role: if you can manage to establish your own intelligence agency or construct a police station, it will reduce the likelihood of spies being able to steal some of your more advanced technology.

Combat

What They Said“Combat has been reworked, as has the AI, placing more emphasis on balanced army composition. Among the changes to the combat system is the addition of melee naval units, which will force you to really rethink the way you execute your naval assaults.”

Killing things takes longer, but it’s still worth your time.

How it Plays
We learned back in March that the combat was going to move from a 10-point scale to a 100-point scale, meaning there will be more gradation in hitpoint distribution. This is intended to slow down combat so that players could form defensive lines and have more opportunities to retreat. In my own battles, I’ve noticed it takes considerably more turns to destroy barbarian camps; when the shoe is on the other foot and I’m getting my butt handed to me, I’m better able to withdraw my forces in time to heal and regroup before they’re destroyed. It’s definitely extended the life of combat, and that seems to really be taking into account how military units are positioned more so than before.

But I’ve also found it much harder to tick off rival civilizations. I’ve had “hostile” relations with a handful of civs, but in several games, not one has declared war and fired the first shot — a dramatic about-face from vanilla Civ 5, where war was declared at the drop of Abe Lincoln’s top hat. And even when I started losing the wars I started, I could still reach an amicable peace without having to sacrifice my lands or money to make it happen. Granted, these experiences are based on spending around 10 hours with Gods & Kings, and this preview version definitely has some balance tweaking yet to be done, but it was a big change.

Don’t mind me, I’ll just hang out on my island and build some nukes.

Other than those three big things, there are a ton of small but noticeable changes across the board, like how city-states operate and give missions, additional civs, units, and buildings, and new scenarios — one of which includes a cool steampunk theme with airships and all. They’ll all go a long way toward turning vanilla Civ 5 into ancient history once this expansion arrives in June.